


the kiersey college apple festival

by sincerelyreidburke (poindextears)



Series: Kiersey College OC-Verse [3]
Category: Kiersey College (Webseries), Original Work
Genre: Autumnal Aesthetics, College Life, First Meetings, Fluff and Humor, Gay Panic, Gen, Kiersey College, M/M, Meet-Cute, Nando is a big gay idiot who I love, New England In The Fall, One Shot, Pining Over A Stranger, Sort Of, Yes Really, apple picking, short and sweet, speaking of which
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25938334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poindextears/pseuds/sincerelyreidburke
Summary: The day when Nando meets the cutest boy in the world starts as a regular day.
Relationships: OMC/OMC, Sebastián "Nando" Hernandez/Quinn Cooper
Series: Kiersey College OC-Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878397
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42
Collections: Kiersey College





	the kiersey college apple festival

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was re-working Quinn and Nando's first meeting a little... here's your first fic in the gradual replacement process. And if you're seeing this out of context, these are my OCs, the students of Kiersey College!  
> [You can learn more about them on Tumblr at this page.](https://sincerelyreidburke.tumblr.com/kiersey-college)

_Nando's freshman year_ | _September 2018_

The day when Nando meets the cutest boy in the world _starts_ as a regular day.

Well, okay. As regular as a day can get when you wake up to your roommate loudly trying to get you out of bed. “Nandooooo,” Ben is saying. “Nanny.”

Nando rolls over in bed, to face the ceiling, and grumbles. The sun is shining through the window, and his mattress is moving, because Ben is perched on the far end of it, bouncing up and down and up and down.

“Nan,” Ben says again, and then shakes his ankle from above the comforter. “Get up.”

Nando does not want to get up. It’s Saturday morning, and he was out late last night. So was Ben. Why would either of them get up right now?

“Dude,” Ben adds, shaking his ankle again. “I know you can hear me.”

Nando, on the whole, has had a good roommate experience so far. Ben is definitely his best friend at Kiersey— and Remy close second, but still, he and Ben hit it off from the moment they met over social media this summer. They’ve made it through six weeks of the semester without incident. But this morning, this awakening, is testing his patience.

“Se. Bas. Tián. Her. Nan. Dez.”

He puts his palm over his face, takes a long, deep breath, and finally, in a voice that comes out groggy, replies, “ _What_ , dude?”

“You gotta get up!” When he’s rubbed his eyes and looks up, Ben is grinning— and also fully dressed. His hair is up in its usual bun, and he’s in jeans and a band shirt, which is pretty standard casual Ben material. What still makes no sense, though, is that it’s— well, early enough on a Saturday morning that Nando hasn’t woken up naturally yet— and Ben is not only _awake_ , but dressed. Nando, if anyone, is the early riser in this dorm room. And he _knows_ they both went to sleep at one o’clock in the morning, because that’s when they got back from yet another party at the upperclassman hockey players’ house, one of several that Ben has been trying to use as methods for Nando get his mind off of the slightly crushing breakup he had with Nate two weeks ago.

He likes parties. Liked them, when he got to college. Still likes them. Appreciates Ben so much for trying to cheer him up. But right now, he would like to _sleep off_ last night’s party, not wake up bright and early directly afterward.

“Why,” he deadpans, sitting halfway up in bed, “do I have to get up right now.”

Ben grins all the wider. Nando wonders if he just took, like, several shots of espresso, having this much energy right now. “It’s the apple festival, dude!” He bounces on the mattress again. “Fucking— apple party!”

 _Apple festival._ It rings several bells. Nando has seen the posters on campus for a couple of weeks now, advertising Apple Weekend— a weekend full of trademark New England fall fair stuff, kickstarted by the opening of the campus orchard for public picking. He knew, at the back of his mind, that today was the apple festival. He just also didn’t realize that Ben was so, like… excited about it.

“C’mon!” Ben is still grinning like a madman. “You gotta get up so we can go!”

“Rho,” he mumbles, pulling his blanket into his lap and staring him down across the mattress, while trying to behave like a person who has been awake for more than thirty seconds, “why are you so excited about apples right now, dude?”

“Bro, apples are a _rich Kiersey tradition_ .” He speaks like he’s letting him in on some kind of government secret, leaning forward on the mattress and everything. “And _Kiersey_ ,” he adds, “is a rich Shaley family tradition. It’s basically part of my heritage.”

Nando raises his eyebrows. “I feel like the fact that your uncle went here doesn’t make this place a ‘rich Shaley family tradition’.”

Ben flips him off. “You’re an asshole,” he replies, “and also, we’re _going_ to this apple thing, so help me God. I will drag you. _We_ will drag you.”

“Who’s we?” he tries.

“Me and Rem,” Ben replies. “And speaking of which, he should be here any—”

 _Knock, knock, knock._ Ben whips his head to the door, and Nando jumps a little. “What the fuck,” he laughs, “did you _time_ that?”

Ben shrugs, as he jumps off the bed to answer it. “I told him to come over at nine,” he replies, which answers the question of what time of day it is. Nine is _way_ too early to be awake on a Saturday, but whatever.

“The man is prompt,” Ben adds, as he pads across the floor. He’s in his socks, but otherwise dressed for the day, which is consolation in that the alternative would have been him jumping on Nando’s (recently washed) comforter in his Vans. He yanks the door open and answers in the exact same loud, enthusiastic voice that woke Nando from his slumber. “Remy the rat Tremblay, how are we this morning?”

“I’m… ready to eat some apples, I guess.” As Ben lets Remy in, Nando sits up all the way and feels a gigantic yawn coming on. It hits, of course, right as Remy waves to him. “Hey, Nan.”

He gets through the yawn of the century, blinks a couple times, and then waves back to Remy. “Dude,” he mumbles, putting a hand through the curly disaster that is his hair. “Why did you let him peer pressure you into this?”

“I wasn’t peer pressured,” Remy replies, with a shrug. He’s in a Kiersey Hockey sweatshirt, and he, too, looks so much more awake than any human being should be on a Saturday morning at nine o’clock. “I want to see what all the buzz is about.”

Nando looks between them, shaking his head. “The betrayal.”

“Dude, you’re being dramatic,” Ben laughs. He hops back up onto his mattress, uninvited— he does that all the time— and remarks, “What could be so bad about an entire weekend dedicated to apples?”

“I feel like this campus has, like, an apple cult.” He really _is_ being sort of dramatic, but now that he’s actually awake all of the way (or at least on his way there), it’s funny to keep up the act. “And you guys are in it.”

“Maybe we are.” Remy shrugs and folds his arms, leaning against the door. “But you’re coming with us.”

Ben grins like a supervillain again. “Whether you like it or not.”

Nando sighs, and looks between his best friends. It’s not that he’s opposed to apples as an institution. It’s just that he’s done a lot of the ‘going out to try and take his mind off of lingering heartbreak’ thing lately, and he was maybe counting on this day (or at least this morning) to sleep in and wallow a little. He hates Nate, and he’ll never forgive what he did to him, but he _is_ going to move on. There are just some days where you… well, don’t feel up to doing stuff.

But with Ben and Remy in his room like this (okay, it’s Ben’s room, too, but whatever)... what choice does he have?

“C’mon, you’ve gotta get up.” Ben pats his shoulder like a dad who is attempting to get their kid excited about trying new vegetables. “We’re gonna miss all the free food.”

Free food.

Okay. _Okay. Maybe_ that sounds slightly intriguing. Nando perks up just a little and squints in Ben’s direction. “There’s food for free?”

“Aha _ha_ ,” Ben cries, triumphant. “ _Now_ you look interested.”

“Well, it’s _college_ ,” he mumbles, patting his hair down again. “Nothing’s free.”

Ben winks. “Everything apple your heart could desire is free at this festival, baby.”

“Including cider donuts!” Remy adds, in a singsong voice very unlike himself, like this has awakened some inner childlike donut fanatic in him.

Nando _does_ love donuts. And other free apple-y foods. Really, it’s just the chance to eat something that doesn’t come from the dining hall excites him. He loves the café on campus, Bluegrass Coffee Co., but it’s a danger to his wallet, since it’s not on the meal plan.

“Well,” he mumbles, after a moment of silence hangs in the dorm room. “If it’s a Kiersey tradition.”

Ben literally launches himself off the mattress to high-five Remy. “ _Hell_ yeah,” he cries, with a laugh, and whirls around to finger-gun at Nando. “ _Now_ we’re talking, Nanny.”

“Get dressed,” Remy adds. “We ride in five.”

*

When they step out of the front door of Wilson Hall, walking three across, as has become habit, Nando realizes that what he thought was an over-exaggeration on his part was maybe more accurate than he realized. With the way campus is alive on this random Saturday morning, he thinks maybe Kiersey really _is_ home to an apple cult.

The main quad is set up sort of like it looked at the club fair at the beginning of this semester; there are a bunch of individual tables and a few small tents spaced evenly out along the sidewalks and grass. Nando realizes, as he takes in the sight, that he saw people setting up for this yesterday afternoon, but he guesses he didn’t realize how big of a deal this was actually going to be. He feels like the entire student body is milling around on the quad right now. Well, not _really_ . That’s an _actual_ over-exaggeration. But there are a lot of people outside.

“So, uh…” He glances to Ben, who looks like he’s in his glory. “Where do we go first?”

Ben grins. It only occurs to Nando right then that he’s wearing an apple-printed scrunchie in his hair. What is his _deal_ with apples? “The orchard, obviously.”

“Orchard,” Nando echoes. “Right.” He knows there’s an apple orchard on campus, way up behind Meelia and the other sporting facilities, and also knows that they’re really not supposed to pick from it outside of apple weekend. Now that apple weekend has arrived, he guesses they should seize the moment. But he still thinks this is some kind of weird New England thing, because… “So we just… uh, we just pick apples?”

“They give you a bag,” Ben explains, “and then you fill it. And it’s yours. Do you have your student ID? They’ll make you pay if you can’t prove you’re a student.”

Nando pats the pocket of his sweatpants, where his lanyard is hanging out because apparently that’s college style or something. “Yeah, it’s here.”

They start onto the sidewalk that leads eventually toward the orchard, where walking three across is mostly doable but occasionally a hazard to other people. “This…” Nando mumbles, observing not only the phenomenon of the apple festival itself but also the sheer amount of people traffic that it so clearly attracts, some of which, by the way, look like grown-ass adults from the _town_ of Kiersey who have nothing better to do on a Saturday than go to a college apple festival, “is maybe one of the most New England things I’ve seen yet.”

“It definitely is,” Ben replies, tucking both hands into the pockets of his ripped jeans. “This is me introducing you to my culture.”

“You’re from _Providence_ ,” Remy tells him, and the way he chooses to pronounce _Providence_ based on his accent is just so fricking French that it’s kind of funny. “That’s a _city_. Apple picking isn’t your culture.”

Ben mocks a gasp. “New England is my culture, asshole! Have _you_ ever been apple picking?”

“Yes,” Remy replies, without missing a beat. “Quebec isn’t really that different from New England, you know.”

“That’s such bullshit, dude. We have Dunks here.”

“Tim Hortons will forever be superior to Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“ _Bite your tongue_. Dunks is the only coffee shop that matters.”

“I will challenge you to a duel.”

“ _Bet_. You’re on. Winner gets to deem their coffee place superior—”

“ _Guys_ ,” Nando cuts in, because this is chirping he can’t _not_ participate in. “What’s wrong with Starbucks?”

Ben and Remy both express their disdain in different ways— Remy wrinkles his brow and gives a thumbs-down, and Ben goes, “ _Booooo_ , dude. Starbucks is overpriced and their food is ass.”

“Hey!” Nando cries. “I like their cake pops.”

Ben sighs wistfully, then pats him on the back as they walk along. “You’ll learn,” he says. “Four years at Kiersey and I’ll have you converted to my New Englander coffee ways. Do you not agree that Dunks iced coffee is fire?”

“It’s _good_ , but…” Nando has had iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts maybe three times total, all instances of Brendan, one of the seniors on the team, doing a coffee run before team meetings on weekend mornings. “I mean, I like the donuts better than the coffee.”

“Donuts from Dunks are okay,” Remy says. “But Timmy’s are better.”

“I’m _not_ accepting your Canadian opinions right now, rat boy,” Ben snaps, without looking at him.

Nando laughs, and moves to the side to let a group of people by before he falls back into step in their line. They bypass the main quad and head up like they’re going to Meelia for practice, except instead of stopping at the team door of the rink like they usually do, he knows they’ll head all the way up the hill to the orchard.

And then… they’ll pick apples, he guesses? He doesn’t really know how it works. But campus is buzzing, and his best friends are chirping each other, and the sun fills the morning with warm, autumn light, and now that he’s outside, he’s pretty sure it’s going to be a good day.

*

Between the three of them, they pick a peck of apples, a measurement Nando was not aware was an actual thing outside of the Peter Piper song until they get up to the little stand at the orchard and get asked if they want a peck or a bushel. Ben, who has apparently done this before, says they want a peck, so they get handed a small bag and proceed to get let loose in the orchard. It’s actually really fun— at one point Ben climbs into the top of the tree just because he sees a monster-sized apple and insists he has to have it; Remy eats one right off the branch and says it’s really good; Nando tries to get a bunch of different varieties to fill their little bag. When they finish, a bag full of apples richer, they head back down to the main quad to check out all the stands are set up. And the free food.

Look, Nando can’t lie. It’s really cool, and he’s glad his friends dragged him out of bed for this. He finds a warm cinnamon donut to try, and he’s pretty sure, in that moment, that he hasn’t had this euphoric of a food experience since he got to college.

Ben seems to be having a similarly good time, because they approach a table with a bunch of candied and caramel apples on sticks, and he rubs his hands together, the crackhead supervillain vibe from this morning returning. “Look, don’t tell my orthodontist,” he says, “but I am about to go to _town_ on one of those candy apples.”

“Orthodontist?” Remy echoes. “But you don’t wear braces.”

“He has retainers,” Nando supplies, which he knows because Ben sleeps with them in every night and has this habit of popping them in and out. It’s not exactly _annoying_ , but it’s a noticeable thing when you’re sleeping in the same room as him. “He used to have braces.”

“Oh, man,” Remy laughs, as Ben lurks over the table like a hawk swooping in on its prey, “I would _kill_ to see pictures of you when you had your braces on.”

“If you would like to see vintage photos of Middle School Ben Shaley,” Ben says, examining the apple spread, “I will be happy to oblige.” He plucks one up by the stick; it’s a red apple dipped in sugary, candied confection, and it looks… well, really good, to be honest. Nando eyes the caramel ones and wonders if he should also indulge. It would be messy, but it would kind of be totally worth it. There are caramel ones rolled in different stuff, like crushed-up M&Ms, and peanuts…

He must zone out for a second looking at all the choices, because when he looks up again, Ben and Remy have moved a little ahead on the path, away from this particular table. “Hey, Nanny,” Ben calls, “you coming? We’re gonna go find a bench.”

“Oh— yeah!” He looks up to them and steps back from the table, then turns to follow. The apple can wait, he decides. “Coming, sorry.”

That’s when it happens.

Nando isn’t a _clumsy_ person, not exactly. Like, he’s a _hockey_ player— there’s a certain amount of coordination required there in the first place, and even off the ice, he’s not prone to randomly stumbling or causing people-traffic collisions. When he looks back on this moment, he’ll call it some kind of sign— but for now, he blames it on the fact that it’s really crowded on the quad.

Because what happens is, he turns and jogs up to rejoin Ben and Remy on the busy sidewalk. “You guys almost left me in the dust!” he laughs, and falls back into step with them.

Ben is examining his candy apple like he’s trying to figure out how to eat it, and Remy bumps his elbow to Nando’s to chirp, “You got so zoned out looking at those apples.”

Nando shrugs. “They looked good,” he replies, and then, looking ahead on the path, his eyes fall on some random person among the many coming the opposite way.

And that’s when he realizes, in a two-second rush, a glimpse, a fleeting moment, that he is laying eyes upon the cutest boy he has ever seen in his life.

That’s dramatic, and he doesn’t care, because it’s his brain and he gets to make the rules. The guy is short, maybe a full foot shorter than him or a few inches shy of one, and he’s holding a paper cup of what looks like hot cider. He has short strawberry blond hair all swept to one side, and pale, freckled skin. There’s a knit white scarf around his neck, and he’s dressed sort of formal for a casual fair, and he’s just— _wow_.

 _Holy shit._ Nando is vaguely aware that he’s staring, and he doesn’t care, because the guy is looking dead ahead and what’s the harm in admiring someone so pretty if they don’t see you anyway, right?—

— And then he bumps into him.

“Oh, shit—” He stumbles and narrowly avoids the guy at the last second, which is good, because he feels like that would not have ended well for his cup of hot cider.

“Oops!” the guy says, lifting his cider out of reach of their minor collision, like he, too, can sense the potential catastrophe.

“I’m so sorry,” Nando cries, and meets his eyes, which doesn’t help literally _any_ of the gay panic he’s experiencing right now, because this guy has eyes like you read about, either blue or green like they can’t decide which color they want to be, and they are freaking _beautiful_ , just like the rest of him. “I wasn’t paying attention,” he supplies, which is better to say than a stranger than _you are so pretty, hello, my name is Sebastián, I’m sorry I zoned out so much looking at you that I almost knocked you over_.

“Don’t worry,” says the boy, with a gentle, cheery smile. He presses the lid down on his cider cup and adds, “It’s okay.”

And then he keeps walking, and he’s _gone_.

Nando keeps walking, because what choice does he have? You can’t just run after a stranger and talk to him because he’s cute, right? He’ll lament to his friends instead. “Holy shit,” he mutters, as the distance between him and Cute Boy grows, “that guy was so cute— _fuck_!”

Ben bursts out laughing as he’s about to bite into his apple. “Nanny, you simp,” he says. “Go and talk to him!”

“You can’t just try to _talk_ to a random _stranger_ ,” Nando groans, and rubs his forehead. _Fuck_ . He hasn’t gay-panicked like that over a random person in _such_ a long time, maybe ever. “Oh, _God_. He was beautiful.”

“I didn’t even see him.” Remy cranes his neck behind them like he’s trying to see; Nando looks, too, but all he can catch is the back of his ginger head as he disappears into the quad crowd, and then he’s gone. The cutest boy in the world is on this campus, and Nando has _no idea_ how to find him or if he’s ever going to see him again, and— _man_ , yeah, okay, he’s being pretty dramatic, but _wow_ , that guy was just so freaking _cute_ —

“ _Ughhhh_ ,” he grumbles into his hand. “I’m an _idiot_.”

“Why,” Ben laughs, “because you bumped into a cute guy?”

“Because I’m never gonna _see_ him again—”

“Holy shit, Nanny,” Remy marvels. “Was he really that cute?”

“Yeah,” he replies, and does not elaborate, and because there is no use in pursuing a random stranger due to the fact that that would be creepy, he walks along with Ben and Remy, and decides there’s nothing he can do about it.

*

Except that night, he’s still being dramatic about it.

“I just…” He stares at his hands, sitting on his bed. Ben, on his own bed across the room, is playing Minecraft on his phone, and Remy has taken hostage of Ben’s beanbag on the floor. Nando senses that this room is going to feel more like a triple this year than a double, and he’s completely okay with that. “I dunno, guys, have you ever gotten a person’s face stuck in your head?”

Remy laughs at the ceiling. “No and no, dude,” he says. “You guys are _weird_.”

“Well, you don’t date,” Nando mumbles. “We can’t all be free from the burden of a love life.”

Ben snorts, and doesn’t look up from his Minecraft. “A love life isn’t a _burden_ ,” he says. “Unless it’s with Nathan McNulty.”

Nando grimaces, and Remy mocks a gagging noise. “We don’t speak of him,” Remy declares.

They’re right— Nate sucks. But Nando loves his friends.

“Anyway.” He leans back on his bed and puts his hands over his face. “I’m pissed.”

“Look, Nanny, here’s what you need to do.” Ben still looks zeroed in on Minecraft, but he sounds like he’s about to give a lecture. “Just put out an advertisement on campus. We can help you make posters. I see it now. ‘Looking For Cutest Boy On Campus. Last Seen: At The Apple Festival Wearing A Scarf. Reward: Free Hockey Tickets’.”

“Perfect.” Nando laughs and groans at the same time. “Thanks, Rho.”

“Oh, you’re welcome.” Ben taps vigorously at his phone. “I’ll help you make flyers tomorrow.”

“We’ll post them in popular places,” Remy adds.

“Exactly, rat b— _Oh_!” Ben sits forward on his bed, throws his phone down, and cries, “It just hit me, Rem. I know what you should be for Halloween.”

Nando lifts his hand off his face to squint at Ben, and Remy looks just as confused. “How…” Remy mumbles. “... does that have anything to do with making posters?”

“It doesn’t,” Ben replies. “It has to do with you being rat boy.”

“I am _not_ going as a rat for Hallo—”

“No, dude!” he says. “You should be the chef. Linguine. From the movie.”

Nando snorts and rolls over to laugh into his pillow. Remy is quiet for a few seconds, and Ben lets his genius idea hang in the air for a moment before he adds, “This is important shit, Rem. The Halloween party’s in three weeks.”

“What Halloween party?”

“At Beech Street!” Beech Street, or their colloquial name for the hockey upperclassmen’s rented house on the edge of campus, is home to pretty much every hockey party that happens at Kiersey. It’s where they were last night. “Teegs is already talking about the music.”

“Oh, _great_ ,” Remy mumbles. “Because there’s nothing cooler than showing up to a frat party dressed as a chef.”

“It’d be kinda funny, Rem,” Nando points out. “People who know you would get it.”

Remy looks between the two of them for a second, then shrugs. “I’ll consider it,” he says.

Nando rolls back over in bed, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and gets back to thinking about the cutest boy in the world, who he’s never going to see again.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come hang out](https://sincerelyreidburke.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, and thank you for reading! More coming soon!


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